The Long Road to Laos, Part One
I left Lijiang to continue my big backtrack to Kunming before heading south. I’d returned to my old guesthouse and as I left, the old grandma gave me a good luck necklace. Well, my first order of business at that point was to get lost trying to exit the old town. What I found, though, was interesting. Strolling through the souther perimeter of the old town, I came upon an entire section of newly-constructed buildings in a more Chinese, less Naxi style. These looked like some sections of the touristy part of old Lijiang. This area was not yet inhabited, but the intent is clear – surround the beautiful tradiditional Naxi old town with a Chinese tourist-trap.
I boarded a spiffy modern bus to head back to Dali. This proved less comfortable and slower that the old rattler I took on the way up. The windows wouldn’t open, so if got very stuffy. They showed a typically silly Hong Kong comedy and took two rest breaks during the “grueling” three-hour odyssey. Sadly, the comedy was subtitled in English, or I could have avoided it.
Back in Dali, I visited my old guesthose. To my utter amazement, my towel was still hanging on the clothesline, right where I’d left it the week previous.
But I was exhausted, and I headed for a hotel that had been recommended to me. I needed to splurge on a little luxury after two straight weeks in dorms. The cost was only $10 CDN. The Yunnan Hotel is a new place, still a work in progress, but I was quite happy with the “living room”. This was built on a glass floor above the hotel’s expansive fish pond, and features free Internet, big stereo and DVD. I was pretty much the only guest so it was my own personal living room.
That I was the only guest speaks to something I’ve seen in China. These tourist towns seem built for peak season, and so many of the hotels and restaurants are largely empty for most of the year. They’re mainly family-run operations, and I do kind of feel bad picking one over the others.
By the time I was leaving Dali, a sense of urgency was developing. I actually needed this, because the past couple of weeks were filled with dawdling. I spent four nights each in Dali, Lijiang and Kunming, double what I really needed to. This was especially bad because two of these towns had little to offer me and because earlier on the trip a four-night stand anywhere was rather monumentous.
Finally, though, I was on the move and loving it. Within a week, I’d be in Laos, starting the southeast Asia leg. It was going to be weird I thought. In China, you can live a pretty good lifestyle for almost no money, including dirt cheap fast Internet. I’d been quite connected for seven weeks, and was becoming only a part-time traveller, as preparations for my return have begun in earnest. I have some publishing projects in the works I am really look forward to getting home and getting started. But travelling also holds great appeal and I needed to push forward.
Will I Ever Get To Jinghong?
I was forced to spend an extra day in Kunming to attend to some errands. Getting dollars in China is difficult work, but not quite as difficult as using a bank card in Laos.
Tuesday morning arrived much earlier than I’d hoped. I trudged zombie-like to the bus station and grabbed some dumpling soup with cabbage for breakfast. I’m quite used to eating fiery soups in the morning at this point.
I got to my bus, destination Jinghong. Departure time was 8:30. At 8:20, the passenegers were looking at me and giggling. At 8:25, I thought they’d mistaken me for David Beckham or something they were staring so intently. I dug out my pen to sign a few autographs.
At 8:27 they were hustling me off the bus. They told me that particular bus was only going to Simao. The sign, of course, said Jinghong, but they didn’t know I could read it. Another bus, they said, was for Jinghong. Sure enough, a sleeper bus was pulling in.
I think, ultimately, they wanted to put me on a sleeper rather than the old, seats-only bucket I was booked for. The catch was that the sleeper wasn’t departing until 10:30, and my first bus was long gone by the time I determined this little fact. They had my backpack stowed already, so I really couldn’t go anywhere, but at least I could lie down. However, I’d be arriving in Jinghong quite late, and I really don’t like doing that.
Amazingly, they attempted to give me the worst seat on the bus, yet again! Actually, this time I think to them it was the best seat, middle row with the TV in front of my face. Being that I expected to be the only one more interested in staring out the window than staring at hyperkinetic Cantonese comedy, I insisted on the window. And so there I was, beginning the longest day left on this trip, already tired and confused.
And then upset. The bus was delayed, from 10:30 to 11:00, and then from 11:00 to 11:30. The trip is twelve hours long, and I was getting quite concerned. Pretty much everything in China starts to shut down around 11 and by midnight the streets are often deserted. I could easily be stuck without a place to stay or food to eat. Their answer to my complaining – put some music on. I complained some more, so they put on a video. Just to add to my burgeoning confidence that I’d never see Jinghong, I noticed that the driver has his own little TV.
The program began with a really good movie, actually. It was Cantonese, but rather western in style. The plot revolved around a slightly repressed office shmoe. He reminded me of Homer Simpson, but living in the Office Space world.
There were no English subtitles, so I didn’t quite get everything, but the guy had a really bad day, and needed money but couldn’t get any no matter what he tried. There were always cops around to give him a hard time to. At the end he jumps off a bridge and tries to swim across the harbour, and the next thing you know a policeman is swimming behind him. I thought the film was very funny, and I probably missed half the jokes.
This was followed by Tom & Jerry, dubbed into Mandarin. But wait, you say, there’s no dialogue in Tom & Jerry cartoons. Well, there is in China. Nobody’s lips are moving, but they’re talking nonetheless.
No, I Shall Never Get to Jinghong
Our first stop was the town of Yuxi. I was given a meal ticket for lunch. The selection at the bus depot canteen was grim – greasy things cooked beyond recognition. I made out like my hesitancy in ordering was because I was an ignorant foreigner, but really I was having trouble determing which items would be the least inedible.
At one point we crossed what was billed as the highest bridge in the world. Naturally, the only statistic provided was its length. It was high, but I swear I’ve been on higher.
At Mojiang, a town populated by the Hani minority, I crossed the Tropic of Cancer again. The cold, fog and rain of my last night in Kunming was almost nostalgic because I’d be spending the next six weeks in the tropics.
At Simao, problems took over. Our ten minute stop stretched over half an hour. Then the bad news – the bus is broken, we must go to another. Me not speaking the language, I was the last to put this together and got no choice of beds on the new bus. This bus was a tangle of metal bars inside. It was dark, cramped, and prison-like. I was filled with the noxious product of twenty chain smokers. The only spot left was in the back ghetto with the riff-raff who couldn’t afford a reserved bed.
One generous man offered up his bunk. At first I declined, but in China this is merely considered “part of the game” so he refused to get back in his bunk and I eventually hopped on board, quietly grateful. It was quite a bit smaller, though, than my previous bunk and my shoulders were too wide to properly fit in the thing. With winding roads and sharp turns aplenty, I sustained a lot of bruising on my arms from the metal bars on each side of the bunk.
Worse yet, we were late. They managed to stretch a 165km journey into four and a half hours. At the beginning of the day, ETA in Jinghong was 8:30. We pulled in at 1:30 am. My “backpacker’s choice” guesthouses were closed up for the night (welcome to China) and I was left with the one across from the bus station. This was not the cheapest in town.
At 1:30 am, who has the negotiating power? They thought they did, but I’d seen an all-night Internet cafe. That made it academic. I WORK ONLINE – I could blow off six or seven hours on Ratebeer just doing my job. So I was going to get my price at the hotel or walk. They, on the other hand, know they’re not going to see too many other visitors. They’ll just lose whatever money they might have gotten from me. So a 180RMB room became a 60RMB room and I got six hours of snoozing in.
Tags: China, Travel, Yunnan
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